da_ming_hun_yi



	Back to Table of Contents 4 To next page Da Ming Hun Yi Tu (1389) (Amalgamated map of the great Ming empire) ---------------------------------------------------- Taken from: news.bbc.co.uk and ruf.rice.edu and uni.erfurt.de and taint.org and exboard.com





		Here a link to a more completer copy of the map


This map is said to be the oldest map of the African continent with the continent facing south, and showing South Africa dating back to 1389. The Chinese map covering more then 17 square meters was produced in silk. It is thought to be a copy of a map sculpted into rock 20 or 30 years earlier. Many believe the mountains in the south are the Drakenbergen in South Africa. The picture shows only part of the map. The digitized reproduction of the map on silk is almost four meters high and more then four meters across. The map was created in China in 1389, and clearly showing the shape of Africa more than 100 years before Western explorers and map-makers reached the continent. Drawn on a horizontal scale of 1:820,000 and a vertical scale of 1:1,060,000, it covers an area extending all the way from Japan to the Atlantic Ocean (including both Europe and Africa), and from Mongolia to Java. Although the section on China seems to be derived primarily from Zhu Siben's Yutu, the renderings of Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia appear to have been based at least in part on Li Zemin's Shengjiao guangbei tu (Map of the Vast Reach of [China's Moral] Teaching; c. 1330), no longer extant." The map also shows a great lake, covering almost half the continents land mass. Researchers suggest it may have been drawn on the basis of an Arab legend that stated "further south from the Sahara Desert is a great lake, far greater than the Caspian Sea". Place names are written mostly in Manchu, a now virtually extinct language, and still in need to be translated.

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